Reporters Sans Frontières

Published on 3 August 2005

Coinciding with the inauguration of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Reporters Without Borders activists demonstrated outside the Iran Air office on the Champs Elysées in Paris today in protest against the imprisonment of Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji, distributing leaflets and affixing posters with Ganji’s photo to the office’s windows.

"Ganji is now on the 53rd day of a hunger strike but the Iranian authorities still refuse to release him," the press freedom organisation said. "So we are all outside Iran Air to demonstrate our outrage at such contempt for human life, because it is utterly horrifying that they are letting Ganji die to punish him for expressing his views." Voicing support for the sit-in which Ganji’s wife today began outside the United Nations office in Tehran, Reporters Without Borders also called on journalists and the international community to add their weight to the pressure on the new Iranian president to free him.

Ganji now weighs just 52 kilos and is unconscious most of the time. He has been refusing food since 11 June to protest against his imprisonment and against the conditions in which he is being held. His condition did not improve after he was transferred on 17 July to Milad hospital in northern Tehran, although he was put on a drip against his will.

During a visit to the hospital, Tehran prosecutor Said Mortazavi again accused Ganji’s wife of wanting to "kill her husband."

Reporters Without Borders said it was outraged by Mortazavi’s insulting attitude and comments. Ganji’s slow drift towards death is the dramatic consequence of the hatred the authorities feel for a highly-regarded investigative journalist and his fight for free expression in Iran, the organisation said.

Ganji’s lawyer, the 2003 Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) she has "serious concerns about his state of health." Ebadi has still not been allowed to see her client.